Search Categories - Any -25 Lines or FewerCanadaPre 21st Century21st Century Grade levels - Any -Grades 7-9 / Sec. 1-3Grades 10-12 / Sec. 4 & 5 / CEGEP 1 Sort by RandomNewestMost popularA -> ZZ -> A Apply Lynn Crosbie Modestine We have each tried to read to him, with no success, except for James, who read him all of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes Brandon Wint From: Incantation: Memory of Water Tonight, a strand of my great-grandmother’s hair sashes an amber beer bottle discarded by a tourist. A white thread of my grandmother’s baptismal robe is a bangle on a wrist of kelp Adonis Ali Ahmad Said Esber The Wound I. Leaves, asleep under wind: a ship for the wound. The wound glories in these ruinous times. Trees growing in our own eyelashes a lake for the wound. The wound shows up in bridges jaye simpson urban NDNs in the DTES had a dozen foster parents tell me to run from my mother’s truth the track marks up her arm, Titilope Sonuga I Am l am gap tooth black girl back corner of class scribbling left-handed poetry on blank paper save the school's curriculum for later I am Jason Purcell Men in the Gut Scrape the inside of sleep the belly wall tasting like yoghurt cooked broccoli its emptiness leaving something on the tongue. Escaping the body that wants to quit from the inside. Karen Solie Tractor More than a storey high and twice that long, it looks igneous, the Buhler Versatile 2360, possessed of the ecology of some hellacious P. K. Page The Blue Guitar They said, ‘You have a blue guitar, You do not play things as they are.’ The man replied, ‘Things as they are… Ada Limón How to Triumph Like a Girl I like the lady horses best, how they make it all look easy, like running 40 miles per hour is as fun as taking a nap, or grass. I like their lady horse swagger, Cicely Belle Blain London I some towers are made of cladding some made of ivory some burn in the night some built by slaves wind rushes through coarse hair body aches between vertebrae Brandi Bird 19 I triage the landscape. The prairies are numb today and so am I. I am too thin. Built like I won't explode on hot afternoons, a mirror to the sky. My body is a hurt where tall grasses grow, where Shirley Camia Sorting through Documents at Dawn three crosses appear on the tv screen following a sweep of my hair that felt like your hand maybe i dreamt it but i so badly Adam Pottle School for the Deaf You gasp, awakened by a bucket of cold water. A gauzy autumn morning. A drained sunrise. You shiver, strain to see the house parent’s fingers whipping & flicking in Chimwemwe Undi A History of Houses Built Out of Spite Evelyn Lau Dear Updike No, nothing much has changed. A year later, the world is still one you’d recognize — no winged cars to clog the air, Sennah Yee Internet Safety My dad taught me to never give out my real name, age, address, or photos. This seemed obvious to me. My fake birthday entry was always my crush's birthday plus a Emily Riddle Dinosaur Economics i wanted bitumen to be made of dead dinosaurs. why did i want these ancient kin to be passively implicated in the fossil fuel industry? it Kai Cheng Thom What the Queer Community Should Have Told Us 1. you are perfect & also flawed 2. you are allowed to make mistakes & you must be accountable for them 3. accountability is not a price you pay in blood for being human Denise Riley Under the Answering Sky I can manage being alone, can pace out convivial hope across my managing ground. Someone might call, later. What do the dead make of us that we’d flay ourselves trying Damian Rogers Good Day Villanelle You ran naked out the door. The neighbours laughed; I chased you down. I hardly see you anymore. James Millhaven Closure On the night we dug up your father’s body (for reasons I can no longer remember) we took turns with the shovel as we passed a bottle of Whyte & Mackay back and forth. Matthew Rohrer Dog Boy ONE Late at night in Oklahoma, a very small, an extremely small man ran across the road in front of my friend’s car. He does not doubt this is real, though the rest of us do, and it doesn’… Rosanna Deerchild the second time i ask mama about residential school she says no i ask her again she says no the third time i stop listen to her silence ask about her diabetes Yusuf Saadi Spacetime We Twitter, Tinder, Tumblr through eternity. Loquacious text messages flit from fingertips, waves of data spill through our skulls. Every cm2 of oxygen overflowing Doyali Islam bhater mondo my mother used to make little rice balls for me. she steamed and clattered about the cramped mustard kitchen, filling a pot with water, swelling and salting and songing Jason Camlot Dear Death, Am I a praise poet or a blame poet? Today I am a blame poet. O Death, face it, existence doesn’t like you. You can’t sing. You can’t paint. Dionne Brand Verso 3.1 At first there's no lake in the city, at first there are only elevators, at first there are only constricting office desks; there are small apartments and hamburger joints and Abigail Chabitnoy Qawanguq with Fox I was walking up some stairs in a building Inside parts of the building were new but no one lived there anymore I passed a lucky fox head on the stairs— Rita Joe I Lost My Talk I lost my talk The talk you took away. When I was a little girl At Shubenacadie school. You snatched it away: I speak like you I think like you I create like you Kazim Ali Ramadan You wanted to be so hungry, you would break into branches, and have to choose between the starving month’s nineteenth, twenty-first, and twenty-third evenings. John Elizabeth Stintzi America (I’m Putting My Queer Shoulder to the Wheel) The night America took off her mask we slept together poorly. I'd woken up early that Tuesday, dragged myself to a gymnasium in Jersey City to cast my vote into the void. Gregory Scofield I’ll Teach You Cree with the tip of my spring tongue, ayîki your mouth will be the web catching apihkêsis words, Tolu Oloruntoba Tinderbox We were a conflagration asking to be incarnated into the world. Mother, superstitious, kept us apart, two stones of the same igneous anger. Everyone saucered tears Olive Senior Rejected Text for a Tourist Brochure “I saw my land in the morning and O but she was fair” - M.G. Smith, “Jamaica” (1938) I Come see my land Come see my land Billy-Ray Belcourt If Our Bodies Could Rust, We Would Be Falling Apart the law mandates that a hate crime only be classified as such if there is ample evidence to show that one’s actions were motivated by prejudice toward an individual’s nationality, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, etc. Sally Ito God the Tea Master All the weapons we marshal to confront the day You ask to be left by the door before entering. The sword in its sheath must lie on the grass, the quiver and bow hung off a branch. Elizabeth Bachinsky Wolf Lake It was down that road he brought me, still in the trunk of his car. I won’t say it felt right, but it did feel expected. The way you… Kaveh Akbar How Prayer Works Tucked away in our tiny bedroom so near each other the edge of my prayer rug covered the edge of his, my brother and I prayed. We were 18 and 11 maybe, or 19 and 12. He was back from college where he built his own Soraya Peerbaye Tide Would I have seen her? The tide tugging her gently past the Comfort Inn; houses, tall and gabled, Sue Goyette Eight The trick to building houses was making sure they didn’t taste good. The ocean’s culinary taste was growing more sophisticated and occasionally Language English